COLUMBUS, Ohio -- California Democrats two years ago faced a situation similar to the one before Ohio Republicans this fall: a ballot proposal that threatened to loosen their grip on the powerful redistricting pen.

The Democrats launched a multimillion dollar campaign to defeat the proposal, but voters approved the measure and turned over the power to draw congressional districts to a redistricting commission much like the one proposed in Ohio.

Two years later, the benefits of the California redistricting commission are up for debate.

Critics say the commission failed to deliver on promises to voters of a more fair, less partisan redistricting process. They cite reports of California Democrats covertly infiltrating the process and influencing the commission’s work. But redistricting experts say the system was an improvement over the old one.

The California plan, which was studied by drafters of the Ohio redistricting reform proposal, offers Ohioans a chance to see how reform could play out here if voters approve the change. It also reveals how politicians — no matter what party — will fight to maintain control over the redistricting process.

“The overall lesson learned is that it’s impossible to take politics out of a highly political process like redistricting,” LoParo said. “They will be ill-equipped to deal with hardened political professionals who in California got their way with the commission.”

Others say California’s redistricting system is better now than it was before the changes.

“Without a doubt the Democrats came out better than Republicans did in California,” said Douglas Johnson, a fellow at the Rose Institute of State and Local Government in Claremont, Calif. “That said, the Republicans came out better than if the legislature and (Democratic Gov.) Jerry Brown controlled the process.”

Under current Ohio law, elected officials control the redistricting pen, granting them the power to influence elections by grouping voters in legislative and congressional districts in a manner that favors their party. Those boundaries stand until new maps are drawn every 10 years after each census.

Voters First Ohio, the union-backed reform proponents, say the system is unfair because it allows politicians to choose their voters and not vice versa.

Issue 2 would establish a 12-member bipartisan redistricting commission to draw the maps. The commission would draw new maps next year to take effect for the 2014 election. New maps would be drawn again in 2021 and every 10 years after that.

The proposal is a response to the GOP-controlled process last year. Republicans in charge of drawing the state’s congressional districts rented a Columbus hotel room out of public view, took cues from an aide to U.S. House Speaker John Boehner and produced a map that seemed to guarantee electoral success for the GOP.

Now Ohio Republicans are fighting Issue 2. While they acknowledge the current redistricting system is unfair, they say that handing over redistricting responsibilities to an independent commission would be a disaster.

Reform opponents said the California redistricting commission is Exhibit A to prove their case.

It documented how Democrats accustomed to controlling the redistricting process embarked on a covert mission to influence the new commission, which was promoted to voters as a nonpartisan panel that would remove politics from the redistricting process — the same argument Issue 2 proponents have been making here in Ohio.

With the help of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, party leaders in California successfully carried out their mission to protect Democratic incumbents, according to the story. Their tactics included choreographed testimony at public meetings and using front groups to submit maps to the commission.

Party leaders considered it a success.

“Every member of the Northern California Democratic Caucus has a ticket back to DC,” according to an unattributed memo obtained by ProPublica. “This is a huge accomplishment that should be celebrated by advocates throughout the region.”

LoParo predicted the Ohio commission would endure similar trouble because both panels are set up to have members unconnected to politics. The California commission included a bookstore owner, an architect, a sports doctor and a former mayor.

“Just like what happened in California, they’ll go up against paid political operatives with sophisticated mapping information, computer programs and data,” he said. “They took advantage of the commission in California to achieve the aims of their clients.”

Daniel Tokaji, a professor at the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University who helped draft Issue 2, said the hypothetical situations described by opponents pale in comparison to Republicans’ antics during last year’s redistricting process.

“They’ve got all these perverse fantasies about what might happen with the citizens commission,” he said. “None of them are nearly as bad as what actually happened in real life.”

The California commission and the proposed panel in Ohio have similarities and differences.

California’s commission has 14 members while Ohio’s would have 12. Both require a mix of Democrats, Republicans and independents or third-party candidates. And both exclude elected officials, their immediate family members, well-heeled donors, lobbyists and others.

Despite similarities in the makeup of the commissions, there are differences in map-drawing rules that would place the Ohio commission under tighter parameters to draw fair and balanced maps.

The California commission, in addition to following federal law, was required to draw maps based on two criteria. Boundaries were to establish compact districts as well as maintain cities, counties and “communities of interest.”

The latter requirement was up for interpretation and opened a window for political operatives to advocate for certain communities of interest.

The Ohio commission, if approved, would operate under four criteria — keeping communities whole, maintaining compactness, maximizing competitiveness and having districts with leanings reflecting how Ohioans actually have voted, a concept called representational fairness.

Michael McDonald, a government and politics professor at George Mason University, said the addition of criteria that stress competitiveness and representational fairness would give the Ohio commission tools unavailable in California to draw maps that would benefit voters.

McDonald also said California Democrats’ influence on the redistricting commission was overblown.

Johnson, of the Rose Institute, said the Democrats’ influence could have been mitigated had Republicans in California been more vigilant.

“Of course the Democrats were organizing like that,” he said. “It’s the Republicans’ fault for not similarly being organized.”

Nevertheless, the political meddling shows the difficulty in crafting a redistricting process that removes politics.

“I would say California was a partial success,” Johnson said. “Certainly it was an improvement over what happened in 2001 when the legislature controlled the process.”